


Null in Void

by MissMarionette



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, I Don't Even Know, The Void, esoteric shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-02-01 04:57:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12697833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMarionette/pseuds/MissMarionette
Summary: I need to write down some Outsider stuff or my head will explode. Outsider's point of view, but the narrator's (i.e. my) ponderings of His existence and of the Void and all that. Esoteric and mystical and out there as all get out.  Probably a few chapters, maybe a collection, I honestly don't know, fam.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dude I don't even know. All I know is that I'm playing Dishonored 2 (fucking finally) and playing the game has gotten me back into the universe and rekindled my absolute fascination with the universe, the Void, the Outsider, and all that jazz. The Outsider is an interesting af concept and character and there are too many cool people out there that write Him better than me, but this is an attempt I wanted to get out there and see if anyone bites...

The fear of the Void is understandable, the Outsider finds, but misplaced. The sublime and ethereal, shadow and filtered light, whispers of regrets and hopes, displays of half-formed thoughts and structures buried beneath ocean and sand and the dust of time. 

It is a concept that the Outsider knows is difficult for humans to understand, and He recognizes that to fully comprehend what the Void is would not necessarily bring the same contentedness of sated curiosity as it would in any other circumstance.

For the chosen few given the Mark, for the scientists and philosophers and alchemists and witches that toe the line between human and property of the Void...they alone can withstand the despair that drive other men mad. 

But what of the common folk, of those who play carelessly with His realm and attempt to curry His favor when He has no need of them, they who hold the mistaken belief that they are in some way unique to the sea of others that were, are, and will be?

He is a murmur in their dreams. Their connection to Him is only made clear in the brief death of sleep, when hallucination and tuned perception are frustratingly ill-defined.

For all the work of the Abbey to scrub Him from existence, to persecute those who recognize His influence and power and summarily pay respect due to him as one would a lord or the blessed earth, a god and demon, a source of knowledge and madness, He will never be severed from them. His actions and inactions influence them, just as theirs inspire Him to reach through the veil to remind them that someone is watching, they are not alone. Whether that is to serve comfort or to terrorize is a matter of opinion.

They exist in His domain as much as He does in theirs. The Void is nothing but a Mind, and yet a Mind that acts independent of its supposed creator. He does not question His existence: He has his own role to play, as much of a piece as they are.

What is lacking in His understanding‒theory as opposed to truth‒is energy. Life. What speaks and moves and quietly goads is a human-like personification of Himself that does not exclaim, that does not cry nor laugh, that does not feel when its fingers brush against living flesh if but for a moment. What is missing, perhaps fittingly, are echoes of there that do not belong here.

At times He has indeed wondered what it would feel like to hold a person flush against His skin as a joint method of expressing love and siring offspring, what it would feel like to be filled in that way, as well. The Leviathans are His avatars, children in a sense, yes, but He does not weep when they are slain. It is the way of things as it had been shortly before and will be shortly thereafter.

Man is a predator, though an unconscientious and short-sighted one at that.

The pains of childbirth, the joy of a loved one returning from the war, the resentment towards a superior, the hardship of poverty and the numbness, despair, and apathy that it inspires. These are all echoed, all understood by the Outsider as legitimate motivations for behavior. He has watched them drive humanity for how many millennia and knows it will always be as such.

For now, as He has, he operates a limbo between idle and dynamism. He passively observes, quietly assesses, formally acknowledges, purposely overlooks, and discreetly praises. He fills the dreams of infants with gentle ocean waves and allows the hums of poorly-carved whalebone to ruin the fragile minds of men. 

All the while He waits until it is time to make Himself properly known to another chosen, another piece to be guided and made aware of their value to the world. And (as suggested in some small corner of what it is all Him and just Him) value to Him, especially.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Really short extra bit and then I'm going to start doing indirect interactions between him and random strangers, maybe.

For all the years that have passed, the grains of sand that are continuously sifted through mankind’s fingers, the Outsider is content, as content as He allows Himself to be, as content as one can whilst knowing the eternal curse of tragedy and disappointment that plague humankind, that there are those in the endless sea of humanity who prove to be interesting. 

He is not actively malevolent. The bone charms and runes that continue to be carved in His name draw power from Him, yes, but that power is not colored by morality. 

Justice and love, abuse and hatred...they are defined superfluously. Arguments in the dens of philosophers attest to that; the lack of consensus on their existence does not mean that they in fact do not exist, here or there. 

Love is not absent in the Void, but the form in which it manifests is rarely anything but terrifying. The almost oppressive quietness save for the sound of the heart beating and the unnecessary breaths taken out of habit, the half-formed collage of memories and possible futures, is harrowing, dizzying, intriguing, terrifying, awe-striking, soothing and comforting for some. 

Hatred, by the same token, is self-imposed, a perception imposed on the realm by religious dogma, diseased minds, toxins of the heart that assume pain and evil in the blessedly removed. From His realm through the mind’s channels that work, to his half-exasperated amusement, in rigid binary. Codes and numbers they have not yet unlocked. He will continue to exist when the Wall of Light is made pocket sized and the encyclopedia is able to be seen in its entirety behind a moving glass pane, when a disease in its infancy is administered to protect the body from itself. It is with a semblance of wry disbelief on His part that they do not realize it is the threat of Him that compel them to scurry. 

He does not always give what is requested, nor does he always take what is offered. Exchanges occur regardless, though, because power will and does flow of its own accord. The consequences for siphoning that which is yet to be fully understood can be plainly seen in the fevers and madness that overtake the unwitting and unsuspecting. Power, but at a silent price. He is never in a position of being short-changed, the tragedies that inevitably occur do not give Him pause but in fact even further sharpen and color His perception of mankind. 

As of now, it is a wash of grays and blues, soothing and melancholy. Yellows and reds, passionate and savage. Green, renewing and fertile. Black, discordant and villainous. White, hopeful and placid.


	3. Chapter 3

The Outsider sometimes entertains Himself with peering into the dreams of sleeping babes. Their connection to the Void is fragile like the few final strands of a swept-away cobweb, but it is nonetheless a simple route through the consciousness of man.

The mind of a child is often just as empty as the Void. Empty, yet full in its emptiness. Far-reaching. Limitless.

Sometimes He manifests within, allows their Self to capture a glimpse of Him as they wave grasping hands at smoke and fog through bleary eyes, or settle into the comfort of something warm and soft dripping with sweetness and soft cooing. Simple pleasures that the Outsider knows that His prior self had forgotten before He had become God. And yet...there is nothing but a detached sort of peace, a ' _this is the way it should be, and always will be_ '.

He supposes He should be grateful that the Leviathans understand that therein still exists a quiet hand of humanity that continues to cradle something deep within what He is and was. In their own special way. They have calves to nurse and a few weep for those lost to age and harpoon.

They even dote on Him like the small but very, very cleverful, wonderful beast they see Him as. So proud they are of Him, so protective of Him.

_Sweet Outsider, so strong and great for one so small. You bless us with your presence._

And thus beasts are capable of love, alien as it is. He cannot remember a time when the Void was not filled with what can only be described as such for Him, and yet reciprocation is not expected nor manifested.

Perhaps that is love, that they continue to do so, everlasting.

Perhaps that is a sign of His darkness, that He does not acknowledge it, ever-stoic.


End file.
